PvP & Economy Update

[Krotux]

Winds of Discovery event will begin upon the launch of our patch 1.17.1: Labor & Legacy which will provide 10% bonus EXP on Nordanaar and 20% bonus EXP on Tel'Abim, with new characters qualifying for a gift upon reaching level 20!

Please do not do this.

Agree. We don't need XP buffs or even gifts.

[Zvyrhol]

Greetings!

Before I get into the changes, I would like to explain a little bit about them, as well as how they will be implemented. Over the next couple of weeks, we will be pushing numerous changes to primarily PvP gameplay but also PvE gameplay, applied to both realms.

These updates are all being done with the note that they are subject to change, with future changes being based on how these changes perform related to our goals. In general, we hope these changes are able to provide players more opportunities for unique or interesting gameplay, and ease pressure on certain economic concerns. Not every change will prove successful immediately, however they will gradually improve the experience with time.


Coming This Week

• Dishonorable Kills have been removed, pending a larger scale rework.

• Blood Ring has received numerous QoL changes and two balance change.
  • Pet Trinkets are now disabled in the arena
  • Worldbuffs are now removed upon entering the arena
  • Mana is now unlimited in the pre-game preparation phase
  • Soul Shards used in arenas are now refunded after the match ends
  • Players are now returned to full health and mana after a match ends

• Battleground Queues are now paused when you enter a battleground, rather than canceled.

• Rank 6 Potions are now able to stack up to 10.

• Open World PvP has received a flat 50% honor gain increase.

• Alterac Valley now rewards 25% less honor, while providing 25% more reputation.

• WSG, AB, and SGV have all had their honor rewards increased by 25%

• Plaguebloom can now be occasionally obtained by picking Arthas's Tears and found in Stratholme.

• The Christmas Shop Sale has been released, let the celebration begin!

Coming In Future Updates

• Faction Leaders now have custom loot tables.

• WANTED quests are now available each week, with a bounty being placed on both the most Honorable and Dishonorable kills in the previous day

• Alterac Valley has been given a new stacking Coward debuff. Every 5 minutes a player does not participate in combat, they gain a stack. After 3 stacks, they flee the battleground.

• War Mode has been changed to give 20% bonus honor from all sources, but reduced to 20% bonus experience.

• Blacksmithing has been given a new item, Horseshoes, which is a trinket giving +3% Plainsrunning movement speed.

• Rich Thorium Veins now share spawn locations with regular Thorium Veins. This does not include nodes found in instances.

• New Towers have been erected in a few contested zones. One will randomly be selected every two hours and "activate," giving both factions a chance to battle for control. The winning faction will receive Warchief's Blessing or King's Battlecry on all characters within the zone for one hour. Any who participated in controlling the tower will additionally receive a decent chunk of honor.

• Winds of Discovery event will begin upon the launch of our patch 1.17.1: Labor & Legacy which will provide 10% bonus EXP on Nordanaar and 20% bonus EXP on Tel'Abim, with new characters qualifying for a gift upon reaching level 20!

Personal Note

I would like to reiterate our appreciation for our playerbase's continued loyalty and support. It's been a magical five years, and we appreciate your continued trust in our vision for a reimagined world in the Mysteries of Azeroth. On behalf of myself and the entire development, design, and support teams here at Turtle WoW: thank you, and happy holidays!

All updates are subject to changes and adjustments as needed

A few questions:

• Are you going to remove dishonorable kills in the cities? Breaking through enemy city army of civilians and low level players could cause problems with Honor loss for attackers.

• What will be respawn time of faction leaders?

• Will the holes in the horde base be finally fixed in AV?

Thanks.

[Twinking]

• Will the holes in the horde base be finally fixed in AV?

Thanks.

What holes are we talking about?
Now it's only a jump over the fence to the horde base, but no one uses it on Tel'Abim.

[Ataika]

• Will the holes in the horde base be finally fixed in AV?

Thanks.

What holes are we talking about?
Now it's only a jump over the fence to the horde base, but no one uses it on Tel'Abim.

You can dodge whole horde base by running into fence hole and running around the base behind the fence/
Entrance is near the large hut braizer

but no one uses it on Tel'Abim.

because 60% mounts
When majority of alliance will have 100% this will be the main alliance entrance

[Hawkbuttiv]

• Will the holes in the horde base be finally fixed in AV?

Thanks.

What holes are we talking about?
Now it's only a jump over the fence to the horde base, but no one uses it on Tel'Abim.

You can dodge whole horde base by running into fence hole and running around the base behind the fence/
Entrance is near the large hut braizer

Far worse is that mages/hunters go OUTSIDE THE BASE, at the waterfall, and pull the defenders, including the commander, off the Frostwolf Relief Hut flag, and kill them outside the base.

Mages can cast spells through the terrain, from outside the base, to the Relief Hut GY.

[Zzerty]

Just to be clear: all dishonorable kills that we have obtained until now will be removed?

I once killed a civilian by mistake and that 1 in my character sheet has been haunting me forever.

[Ataika]

Nerfing AV honor was an awfull idea
People still que AV and do not que WSG (currently 2 games as always during wsg weekend) because wsg is a boring clusterfuck for premades.

But thanks to nerf now it becomes even harderto fight for ranks for a normie who ques av

[Lorencor]

Warchief's Blessing or King's Battlecry

It makes more sense to be Warchief's Battlecry and King's Blessing...or not?

Seems to have a more specific aesthetic with each faction.

[Jc473]

Nerfing AV honor was an awfull idea
People still que AV and do not que WSG (currently 2 games as always during wsg weekend) because wsg is a boring clusterfuck for premades.

But thanks to nerf now it becomes even harderto fight for ranks for a normie who ques av

No, the ranking difficulty stays exactly the same if AV is the dominant BG because, as always, the honour required to rank up is a relative requirement.

But you're partially correct in that there are plenty of irritating factors which dissuade people from WSG (and AB). Even if they made it so that the most effective way of acquiring honour was in WSG/AB, the average person would probably still queue AV because it's a more accessible/casual experience for achieving this goal (not talking about 'afking').

I'll make a post shortly on how the other BGs can be improved.

[Ataika]

Nerfing AV honor was an awfull idea
People still que AV and do not que WSG (currently 2 games as always during wsg weekend) because wsg is a boring clusterfuck for premades.

But thanks to nerf now it becomes even harderto fight for ranks for a normie who ques av

No, the ranking difficulty stays exactly the same if AV is the dominant BG because, as always, the honour required to rank up is a relative requirement.

But you're partially correct in that there are plenty of irritating factors which dissuade people from WSG (and AB). Even if they made it so that the most effective way of acquiring honour was in WSG/AB, the average person would probably still queue AV because it's a more accessible/casual experience for achieving this goal (not talking about 'afking').

I'll make a post shortly on how the other BGs can be improved.

Cool will wait for your suggestions

[Fgd]

An unbalanced system with dishonorable kills ._.

[Jc473]

An unbalanced system with dishonorable kills ._.

What do you mean? The post states that the Dishonourable Kills are temporarily disabled pending a rework.

[Scelus12]

One note in defense of the XP boost/holidays:

I want to induce new players rolling. I see them in the wild as I play my alt, and we will definitely have organic growth over the next weeks and months.

The argument against it is that “it’s not fair to those who already leveled up”. Which in some sense is true. However a mature pvp server is very unsafe for new characters. Many skull ?? players ganking. Giving new levelers a 20% is a completely fair and reasonable thing to do given that. I like it.

If you don’t like, explain why you don’t like, or else nothing will change.

Clearly the devs have shown themselves to be open to logical feedback. We should be thankful for their openness and responsiveness. This is a free volunteer project! And yet they work hard.

Structure and evidence your feedback and I’m sure they will consider it.

[Dkp]

PvP changes are ok but seriously we need diferents premade and solo q bgs. Doesnt make sense queue as solo and face a premade of 10 people. Let solo q guys face solo q guys and premade teams face premade teams, more fun for all.

[Annoying]

PvP changes are ok but seriously we need diferents premade and solo q bgs. Doesnt make sense queue as solo and face a premade of 10 people. Let solo q guys face solo q guys and premade teams face premade teams, more fun for all.

+1 sounds legit.

[Jambiya]

Some good stuff here. Im curious to see if bringing warmode xp down to 20% will curtail enough players who only pick up wm for the easy leveling.

[Elsaph]

turtle wow rocks

[Dannyp92]

Amazing changes in general; excellent work! I really like the idea of incentivizing desirable behavior (e.g. more WG, AB), while also making sure alternatives are still worthwhile (e.g. keep AV relevant). And finally a lot of focus on PvP and the Open World, which is a core feature of Warcraft for many of us. Keep up the good work of expanding Vanilla while never losing sight of its spirit and what made it special in the first place!

However, I am not a fan of XP increase events. It goes against what "Turtle" WoW originally set out to be ("Slow and Steady" anyone?), and can quickly lead to people nagging for more in an effort to reduce leveling to a chore that stands in the way for a predominantly instanced endgame. Don't give in to "instant gratification" people!

[Xenonczz]

Hello. We started playing on PvP server but actually the population dropped drastically so we no longer want to play and would like to try again but on pve server.

Is the transfer possible? How to proceed with transfer?

[Edouchan]

Swap the xp boost entirely for something pvp related in warmode. PVE players shouldnt feel forced to opt into PVP to level faster. I know thats what blizzard did for warmode but theyre lazy and bad and turtle is way better

[Krawallbruder]

Hello. We started playing on PvP server but actually the population dropped drastically so we no longer want to play and would like to try again but on pve server.

Is the transfer possible? How to proceed with transfer?

stop being a fkn sheep, ppl like you are exactly what is wrong

how can you get influenced by a number so easily, you aren't even 60 yet by your post.
both sides got several guilds who clear raid content every week.
there have been other game releases and it's holiday time, overall ppl play less atm until after christmas and newyear. you literally can do everything on this server you want, just enjoy the fkn game it's that easy. player numbers will recover after some time.

[Althalos]

you guys are way too late, no one cares anymore and the server is dead.

[Snowcover]

Really wanted to leave a comment saying that ever since this announcement I am specifically excited about the pvp towers. I had this exact idea when I was playing my character in a contested territory. I think this is a great addition that adds immersion and an image of contested territories being actual battlegrounds. Since I’ve been thinking about it I thought maybe the towers could also contain merchants that can sell useful items of limited quantity to the victors! More incentive to have a tower available.

[Spot]

Will I lose my beloved Dishonored title?

I killed one Horde NPC for it. But it's grown on me.. Like a beard. I like it.

[Redmagejoe]

you guys are way too late, no one cares anymore and the server is dead.

Obligatory "olololo dad server"
It has just as many players as Turtle always had for 3 years. Cry about it.

[Marafado]

hehe "olololo dad server" ;p its more like an asian/russian server :)

[Mslunamgs]

All these people complaining about the temp xp boost are so funny, all of the messages say "Slow and Steady, amirite guys" but I guarantee these people tried SAS and got bored after level 20

[Elesion]

Coming This Week

• Rank 6 Potions are now able to stack up to 10.

Combat Mana Potions are still "Unique (5)" for me, even after clearing WDB multiple times. I was looking forward to this change, hope it can be fixed for the big update this week :)

[Calli]

Who asked for Dishonorable kill changes? Is this an out of season april fools joke? What if a lowbie or group or lowbies is attacking a higher level player ? This is an absurdly unnecessary change

You write /lol. If lowbies can attack you, then you're on a place where you are having fun anyway. If you're a nice guy then ask a dishonored man wreac havoc amongst them.

[Bandyc]

* Most of the good and bad changes are just a symptom of too low of a player base. Fix your core issue.

• Dishonorable Kills have been removed, pending a larger scale rework.

Getting DHK by a grey lvl player is just catering to the PvE community that happen to play PvP. How often does this actually happen to warrant such a wild change? Lowbies repeatedly ganked is a non issue.
A 60 killing a 35 STV while running by is a non issue, it's pvp. If it turns into griefing theres a grief ruleset already. Getting no honor is good enough. Sporadic fights creates and makes the world. Uneducated decision.

• Open World PvP has received a flat 50% honor gain increase.

What's the point? All it does is inflate the honor for rankers and for those who dont honorfarm its redundant. Also *

• Alterac Valley now rewards 25% less honor, while providing 25% more reputation.

Killing AV. Also *

• WSG, AB, and SGV have all had their honor rewards increased by 25%

What's the point? All it does is inflate the honor for rankers and for those who dont honorfarm its redundant. Also *

• Faction Leaders now have custom loot tables.

Every children age 1-40 to defence....if you get me.

• Alterac Valley has been given a new stacking Coward debuff. Every 5 minutes a player does not participate in combat, they gain a stack. After 3 stacks, they flee the battleground.

A tiny minority are semi-afkers in AVs yet this change collectively punishes everyone. Proper stupid idea because regardless this is easily circumvented by semi-afking near mobspawns anyway. This rule changes absolutely nothing at all. And if by combat you mean player combat, it's galaxy stupid.

• New Towers have been erected in a few contested zones. One will randomly be selected every two hours and "activate," giving both factions a chance to battle for control. The winning faction will receive Warchief's Blessing or King's Battlecry on all characters within the zone for one hour. Any who participated in controlling the tower will additionally receive a decent chunk of honor.

Captioning tower was never used in vanilla. If it's gonna work it has to gatekeep access to loot, areas, NPCs, mobs, rep etc or similar. Purely a zone buff is not enough incentive at all. Wpvp honor increase wont matter, see above. Also *


I wonder if an early version of chat GPT is calling the shots over at turtle staff?

• Winds of Discovery event will begin upon the launch of our patch 1.17.1: Labor & Legacy which will provide 10% bonus EXP on Nordanaar and 20% bonus EXP on Tel'Abim, with new characters qualifying for a gift upon reaching level 20!

Tel'Abim is dead, no one is leveling there

What do you think the purpose of this event is?

To make your already existing player base, from either realms, hop from their 60s to level alts? This wont successfully siphon players from the pve realm.
You're aiming this event at your current player base when it should be marketed towards people not yet playing here.
What are you doing to attract new players?
Also *

[Jc473]

So, from reading your post, you are obviously unhappy with just about all of their changes. Well, all I can say is from listening to player reactions/discussions in the discord server and world chat, the vast majority of players are happy. Why? Because, as Akalix said, almost every single one of these PvP oriented suggestions was taken from community feedback. So, I'm afraid, you represent the minority.

• Dishonorable Kills have been removed, pending a larger scale rework.

Getting DHK by a grey lvl player is just catering to the PvE community that happen to play PvP. How often does this actually happen to warrant such a wild change? Lowbies repeatedly ganked is a non issue.
A 60 killing a 35 STV while running by is a non issue, it's pvp. If it turns into griefing theres a grief ruleset already. Getting no honor is good enough. Sporadic fights creates and makes the world. Uneducated decision.

This comment is unwarranted given that they rescinded (due to player feedback) the initial change to add DKs for 'grey' player kills. So, let's see what the 'larger scale rework' system is actually about before we judge it. However, revising the DK system has probably also lead them to the idea of disabling it for civilians. Whilst this can lead to people griefing by camping NPCs, it has completely opened up the possibility of town/city raids. Again, this was a much requested feature from the wPvPers. It breathes life into the world and we've already seen plenty examples of Stormwind/Orgrimmar raids. The fact that they've added custom loot tables to the faction leaders means we are only going to see more of this gameplay.

• Open World PvP has received a flat 50% honor gain increase.

What's the point? All it does is inflate the honor for rankers and for those who dont honorfarm its redundant. Also *

• Alterac Valley now rewards 25% less honor, while providing 25% more reputation.

Killing AV. Also *

• WSG, AB, and SGV have all had their honor rewards increased by 25%

What's the point? All it does is inflate the honor for rankers and for those who dont honorfarm its redundant. Also *

It doesn't inflate the honor for rankers at all. Why? Because no 'rankers' are playing WSG/AB/SGV due to the woeful honour per hour when compared to AV. It simply encourages them (and casual PvPers) to start playing other battlegrounds. Again, changing the honour rewards of BGs has been a much requested change. You know full well that the average modern player is reward focused. So, this approach is the quickest, easiest and most effective way of influencing the frequency of each BG being played.

So, I don't think this strategy (in isolation) is redundant at all. As Akalix has said, these changes will be iterative. To date, a lot of unwilling people (especially PvPers) feel compelled to do AV because of the unrivalled honour per hour. They will continue to adjust these honour rewards until people actually get the memo and realise that AV isn't the 'be and end all'.

• Alterac Valley has been given a new stacking Coward debuff. Every 5 minutes a player does not participate in combat, they gain a stack. After 3 stacks, they flee the battleground.

A tiny minority are semi-afkers in AVs yet this change collectively punishes everyone. Proper stupid idea because regardless this is easily circumvented by semi-afking near mobspawns anyway. This rule changes absolutely nothing at all. And if by combat you mean player combat, it's galaxy stupid.

To be clear, this change is to try and address 'afkers' (not semi-afkers) which is a blight on AV. People have been lamenting about this sort of behaviour since the dawn of time. So, the intent of them trying to do something about it should be applauded. No changes are full proof and I'm sure they will be iterated on after getting some data and hearing feedback.

The reason why they have applied this change is because they don't want to punish people who strategically wait in a position until they see some action. The perfect example is 'tower defenders'. By having a stacking debuff, it gives them time to react to the situation by going to find some combat. As you've said, we don't know what kind of combat is required to reset the timer but we'll find out soon enough. Has it got flaws? Of course, and they'll iterate on the changes.

• New Towers have been erected in a few contested zones. One will randomly be selected every two hours and "activate," giving both factions a chance to battle for control. The winning faction will receive Warchief's Blessing or King's Battlecry on all characters within the zone for one hour. Any who participated in controlling the tower will additionally receive a decent chunk of honor.

Captioning tower was never used in vanilla. If it's gonna work it has to gatekeep access to loot, areas, NPCs, mobs, rep etc or similar. Purely a zone buff is not enough incentive at all. Wpvp honor increase wont matter, see above. Also *

The major reason why existing towers (e.g. Eastern Plaguelands) never saw much action is because too much luck was required to make it work. You need a critical mass of players (more than 10-15) willing to have a sustained PvP session on these towers for people to feel like the system was working. This just never happens organically. Instead, players need to be told that a big battle is happening at EPL towers. This is how the Tarren Mill/Southshore battles work; players just simply make the announcement and the wPvP ensues. Well, this is the strategy of these changes. I promise you, every couple of hours, there will be players asking "which towers are active?".

As for the rewards? Trust me when I say, there are enough wPvPers who will readily participate in this stuff even if there are no rewards other than honour or a buff. It's about creating an easy opportunity to get some wPvP. Someone logs on and asks "any wPvP happening?" or "which towers are active?" and is told "it's currently in Ashenvale". This player can then go to that zone knowing there's a good chance of some action and enjoy themselves for 1-2 hours.

• Winds of Discovery event will begin upon the launch of our patch 1.17.1: Labor & Legacy which will provide 10% bonus EXP on Nordanaar and 20% bonus EXP on Tel'Abim, with new characters qualifying for a gift upon reaching level 20!

Tel'Abim is dead, no one is leveling there

What do you think the purpose of this event is?

To make your already existing player base, from either realms, hop from their 60s to level alts? This wont successfully siphon players from the pve realm.
You're aiming this event at your current player base when it should be marketed towards people not yet playing here.
What are you doing to attract new players?
Also *

* Most of the good and bad changes are just a symptom of too low of a player base. Fix your core issue.

What do they think they are trying to do!? People expected a custom server to have more PvP oriented changes (similar to the PvE experience), so they've now set out on this path. For those who left because of this issue, well, it has a chance of bringing them back. As for the XP event, I have no idea why you think that's just for the existing player base. This type of event is as old as time. It will absolutely encourage people to start playing here, especially if they don't really care for the slow levelling speed of Vanilla. If you still cannot see the logic behind their actions, I don't know what else to say.

To remind you again, they've already said they will be making changes over the next few weeks. They will unlikely get them right first time which is why they said they will iterate on them, subject to feedback.

[Ataika]

It doesn't inflate the honor for rankers at all. Why? Because no 'rankers' are playing WSG/AB/SGV due to the woeful honour per hour when compared to AV. It simply encourages them (and casual PvPers) to start playing other battlegrounds. Again, changing the honour rewards of BGs has been a much requested change. You know full well that the average modern player is reward focused. So, this approach is the quickest, easiest and most effective way of influencing the frequency of each BG being played.

We dont have increased wsg/ab games due to these changes.
Its always some poor 2-3 WSG games at max.

Why ? Because casual players despite WSG cancer premade fest and wont play it even with 100% honor boost.
And right now with all of these changes the result is simple - even higher 25% honor for already nerding rankers and 25% lower honor for casuals who love to play casual AV for their casual 8-10 ranks.

[Jc473]

We dont have increased wsg/ab games due to these changes.
Its always some poor 2-3 WSG games at max.

Why ? Because casual players despite WSG cancer premade fest and wont play it even with 100% honor boost.
And right now with all of these changes the result is simple - even higher 25% honor for already nerding rankers and 25% lower honor for casuals who love to play casual AV for their casual 8-10 ranks.

Yes, as you know, I absolutely agree with this which is why I made this other thread (viewtopic.php?p=81433#p81433) where I echoed your thoughts.

But, as I said, changing the honour rewards is still the easiest approach because it’s ‘just’ a configuration change in the code/database as opposed to design changes mentioned in my thread. If the increased honour still hasn’t persuaded people to start preferring the other BGs, well, that just demonstrates their design issues.

But, make no mistake, players are primarily reward driven. So, if they wanted to, the devs could just further triple the honour rewards from the other BGs. At some point, the players will realise/accept it and probably begrudgingly play them. Do I think it’s the correct approach, of course not. But I understand the need to adjust both the rewards and the design of the BGs, hence why I created the other thread.

[Majestik51]

Come on join us in PVP server guys, big patch comin tommorow. Big things at last!!!

Thank u Turtle Team!!!

[Akalix]

What are you doing to attract new players?

Refer to the entire thread, as well as:
viewtopic.php?t=10910
viewtopic.php?t=5391
viewtopic.php?t=4442
viewtopic.php?t=3334
viewtopic.php?t=2253

We are a Vanilla+ project. What are we doing to attract new players? Vanilla+.